How to import tab delimited text into a base table?

I’m creating a LO Base database to manage CD sales. Every month, I can download a tab delimited text file from my distributor that details the sales for that month. The structure of that file is determined by my distrubutor and I have no say about its structure. I want to import that information into a base table that will hold all my sales and eventually help me calculate the royalties I need to send to each publisher based on data in other tables.

I’ve made a couple of MS Access databases in the past with reasonable complexity but this is my first foray into Libre Office.

It looks like you can’t directly import the tab delimited text file (TDTF) directly into base but have to take the intermediate step of importing into a Calc spreadsheet. I can then import my first report into base by copying the Calc file and pasting into Base. I let it create a new table and import “Definintions and data” using the first line as column names. As I click “Next” it takes me to the Type formatting window where I can specify the data types. Doing it this way, I can successfully create my original table called SalesReport. I let Base create a primary key for this table. So far so good.

Next month I get a new report of sales for that month. Here’s where I get stuck. I can’t figure out how to just append the new data to my existing SalesReport table.

If I do a version of what I did the first time but this time with the “Append data” checked in the Copy Table window in Base, the Type Formatting window never comes up. If I simply let it go ahead and append the data, I get an error saying the date format is wrong. (My first 2 fields after the primary key are date fields, and the only way I could get the data in the first time was by using the Type formatting window which does not come up in this case. Simply changing the format of those date fields in the Calc spreadsheet did not work. I would get an error when I tried to create the table in Base.)

I tried a work-around of importing the new report into a new table, replicating the steps I did for the original table. I can of course create that table successfully. But now I can’t figure out how to append the new table into the original one.

If I simply try to copy the rows of the new table into the first, I get an error. It looks like it’s complaining about duplicate keys. Of course, table 2 starts it’s primary key at 1 and so does the original table. I would have expected Base to be smart enough to deal with this. If I don’t import the the primary key from table 2, I also get an error.

It shouldn’t have to be this hard!! I just want to import and append a monthly tab delimited report of constant structure into a Base table with the same structure. Can anyone walk me through a way of doing this that doesn’t require a Ph.D. in database design to accomplish?

Maybe you can find help in this thread in Aoo forum:
How To: Import CSV into Base Table